gerrymander:jdbob: Just got back from New Zealand. Coins are 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1.00, and 2.00. Bills are $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, etc. They rationalized their currency a number of years back. Not expecting anything rational in the U.S., it's un-american.

Rational would imply using bills for the $1 and $2 denominations -- paper for the left of the decimal, coins for the right.

Advantages of the $1 and $2 coins:More durable and thus cheaper to mint than banknotes.Can be used to buy items in vending machines that cost $1 and up.Can not be faked with a photocopier or scanner-printer.Can be decorated with colourful poppy decals to make US military contractors think they are being spied on by the Canadian Government.Can be marked with nail polish for use in telephones and slot machines.Can be replaced with chocolate coins when you run out of change.Lead to a large number of Looney jokes.Will be called Obama bucks, or possibly Biden bucks.May break the old superstition about the two dollar bill, or Deuce.Easier to tell apart than the old $1, $2, $5, $10, $20 and $100 bills, leading to fewer windfalls for bartenders.Easier to count and roll than pennies.

Disadvantages of the $1 and $2 coins:Can make a pocket full of small change weigh five pounds.Can make you look like a teenager.Make small denominations look more like poker chips.Easier to throw across the Potomac River.You can pretend they are brass pennies and tuppences, thus making it feel like you're shopping in 1912.Inspire cute nicknames that can be used to mock the value of the dollar.Will be dropped off of overpasses and buildings, causing immense damage and many deaths.Will cause pants to wear out more quickly unless you put them in a change purse or coin dispenser.Will annoy the Hell out of Southerners and other old people who hate current fashion for low-riding pants.

I have a little plastic dohicky which holds eight coins--quarters, $1 or $2 coins. It's very handy for 1) paying for my morning coffee and 2) organizing $1 coins for panhandlers. These are the two things that Loonies really make easier--you don't have to take your wallet out or your pocket and there is absolutely no way to mistake a $10 or any other denomination for a $1 coin or accidently hand anyone two coins stuck together.

We now have plastic cards to pay for laundry machines but the Loonies were also good for laundry because you didn't need to feed so many quarters into the machines.

I'm sure you will like some aspects of the new coins. And they are going to happen some day no matter how much the US public hates innovation or change. By then, however, you may go strait to digital currency, so the change may be short-lived.

In Japan and Europe you can pay for many small purchases with your cellphone or the waive of a card. This has been slow to catch on in North America but many people will prefer that option to carrying coins. It will naturally have its own downside, namely the likelihood that several times over a given period of years you will lose everything when you mislay, lose, or are robbed of your cellphone slash wallet slash ID slash healthcare card slash personal organizer slash telephone, radio, TV, portable computer, etc.

You should not put all of your eggs in one basket or all of your life on one pocket computer.

Some day the SF solutions of a computer tattoo or built-in cyborg services will probably come to dominate for the richer people of the world. The very poor may be stuck with cash and cellphones.

I used to care about this, back when you couldn't pay for virtually every purchase with a debit card. The only advantage I see to change is being able to give a bum a handout without getting your wallet out.

Diogenes Teufelsdrockh:WorldCitizen: Maybe about the same time we catch up with the rest of the world and convert to metric?

I'm all for switching to metric, but only after the rest of the world changes the metric system to something based on actual physical constants. Meter based on how far light travels in 299,792,458th of a second, chosen to fit a prototype based on a geographic mismeasure? Kilogram based on an old artifact of questionable accuracy that itself was based on a not-so-accurate measure of a liter of Viennese seawater centuries ago rather than on an actual natural constant like experts want? Fark that noise. Might as well base a measurement system on the size and mass of cereal grains and use that...oh wait, we already are.

Redo the foundations of the metric system to base it on actual natural constants (preferably measured at decimalized points such as 1,000,000th or 1,000,000,000th of a second or some such vs. 299,792,458th of a second for the meter, second (perhaps) itself redefined in accordance to the new system, kilogram redone, etc) with inarguable scientific grounding first then there will be cause for seriously considering switching systems. Otherwise, it's just political BS.

I'm not sure but isn't metric volume and weight based on water? I seem to remember that a 1g of water = 1 ml, that's a pretty natural constant .. and the meter, while now based on the speed of light for some time period (to maximize accuracy), originally was based on divisions of longitude.

petec:I'm not sure but isn't metric volume and weight based on water? I seem to remember that a 1g of water = 1 ml, that's a pretty natural constant .. and the meter, while now based on the speed of light for some time period (to maximize accuracy), originally was based on divisions of longitude.

The original meter was 1 ten-millionth of the pole-to-equator distance (being a roughly human-scale length). Despite a fair bit of estimating, they got within 1/100th of 1% of the real average pole-to-pole circumference. It has a certain bit of the 18th century "oh, we are so clever and scientific" while still being arbitrary feel to it.

Volume isn't really a base unit at all, being a cube of the length measure. The kilogram was meant to be the weight of a litre of pure water at not-quite-freezing. And it nearly is. But, that turns out to be a monstrous bear to actually measure. Partially because very pure water will get well below 0C without freezing until it has a nucleation point. So, we eventually said "this lump... this lump is the kilogram. Deal." Except that now the lumps that once balanced great are no longer balancing perfectly.

The thing is, we have a perfectly good truly universal (as far as we know) length to use for measurement. It's even fairly human-scale, which is awesome. That is, the wavelength of the hydrogen state-transition spectrum line. That is a little over 21 centimeters/8.3 inches. It's the measuring system we use for things like the Pioneer and Voyager plaques/records. Theoretically communicating with non-Earthlings. That same universal phenomenon also gives us a usable unit of time, unfortunately on the order of one-billionth of a second.

UseTheForksLuke:So it costs about eight times as much to ship the coins instead of the bills.Where is the savings?

A, it doesn't necessarily cost eight times as much to ship. Volume plays some role in that cost, not just weight.

And B, pennies and dimes are virtually *never* going back to the Federal Reserve banks. They float around within 10 or 15 miles most of the time. The bills are getting shipped back to DC or Fort Worth and out again every 4-5 years (as they are declared unfit and new printings are released). It's that shipping and handling that adds up.

Lawnchair:A, it doesn't necessarily cost eight times as much to ship. Volume plays some role in that cost, not just weight.

And B, pennies and dimes are virtually *never* going back to the Federal Reserve banks. They float around within 10 or 15 miles most of the time. The bills are getting shipped back to DC or Fort Worth and out again every 4-5 years (as they are declared unfit and new printings are released). It's that shipping and handling that adds up.

A: The Volume of a Dollar Coin vs. a Dollor Bill, the coin takes up apx. 25% more volume than the Dollar Bill including slack space. Making Dollar Coins ten times as much to move around instead of the a Dollar Bill?

B. Not just the cost to the mint, the cost to everyone else transporting the Dollar Coins.

I'd still rather have a pocket full of Dollar Bills than Dollar Coins, they would weigh about ten times less and be worth about 25% more. That's my point.

Dollar Coins are good for one thing, when you buy a beer you can use them for a tip.I really have not found any other good use for them.

pdieten:Where do you get the idea that dollar bills last for almost five years? Most reports are that they last between one and two years in circulation.

From the article... "A typical $1 bill lasts only 4.7 years, according to GAO estimates."You know, it could be more it could be less... average.I took the ages of all the dollar bills in ny wallet and divided by 2, what did you get?

Let me elaborate on that... the average age of all the dollar bills in my wallet and on average they were all equally distant from their half-life so divide by two. Then averaged a bunch of peoples results together. You do not trust the GAO statistics analysis?

Anyone who thinks the Dollar coin is too close to a quarter is an idiot. Its the same size difference (relative) as a dime is to a nickel.

Also: the "vending machine" argument is also BS. All (new) vending machines have been required by law to accept $1 coins for at least 20 years. Any where they don't work but the slots are big enough have it turned off (or blocked on the inside by choice). Any super old machines with smaller slots can just be upgraded (mostly nowadays these are really old parking meters or "vintage" soda machines). It's like a $20 part.

JamesBenjamin:Also: the "vending machine" argument is also BS. All (new) vending machines have been required by law to accept $1 coins for at least 20 years. Any where they don't work but the slots are big enough have it turned off (or blocked on the inside by choice). Any super old machines with smaller slots can just be upgraded (mostly nowadays these are really old parking meters or "vintage" soda machines). It's like a $20 part.

Where is that law? If you read my comment above... "I have also noticed a trend that vending machines no longer accept either coins nor bills; just credit / debit cards." So they do not accept Dollar Coins, or any Coins, or any Bills! So we do not need and Dollar Coins, or Dollar Bills, cashless society, you know... new world order. Most Parking Meters do not accept coins any more either. You swipe your card, you get a receipt and put the receipt on your dash.

Acharne:Everything you typed is likely untrue. Most of it is definitely only opinion. Some of it is just pretty silly.

Please see the comments below and above yours. Namely, fark coins, fark coins, oh, and also fark coins. Just try passing a golden dollar off on anyone if you work a retail register - I dare you. The looks of apprehension and disgust will make you think you just shat yourself. Maybe a few people in this thread are all "oooh! new currency that's both shiny and durable! how COOL!" but not a single person in my experience has ever wanted one over something they could stuff in with the rest of their real money.

glassgnome:Please see the comments below and above yours. Namely, fark coins, fark coins, oh, and also fark coins. Just try passing a golden dollar off on anyone if you work a retail register - I dare you. The looks of apprehension and disgust will make you think you just shat yourself. Maybe a few people in this thread are all "oooh! new currency that's both shiny and durable! how COOL!" but not a single person in my experience has ever wanted one over something they could stuff in with the rest of their real money.

I prefer the dollar coins. They're very commonly given as change from vending machines here. I don't use vending machines too terribly often, but the ones at both malls near me, my current and my previous employers, and one at a strip mall all give dollar coins as change. Cashiers don't even blink when they're given at stores as payment. It's a 100% nonissue. So, this area may be atypical compared to the rest of the country, but it shows that it can be accepted and commonplace. I find the coins much easier to work with than bills, but that's just me. Whatever works.

And if the government has loads of these things in storage, I'm happy to take them off their hands...